Rock
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Stevie Nicks will no longer play at Van Andel Arena in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on Tuesday night “due to illness,” according to a statement on the venue’s social media. “Due to illness, the Stevie Nicks concerts on Tuesday, June 18 in Grand Rapids has been postponed to September 24,” the statement reads. “Customers should hold […]
Did you come in when I was dressed like a sperm?”
Despite her wry tone, Annie Clark — the artist better known as St. Vincent — isn’t joking. Not quite an hour earlier, Clark was posing for her Billboard photo shoot in a hooded, ruffled cream mini-dress in front of a billowing blush-pink backdrop meant to evoke a different bit of human anatomy. (Let’s just say the setup was a spiritual descendant of Georgia O’Keeffe’s work.)
As St. Vincent, Clark conjures an enigmatic, opaque aura. But today, she’s in a frank, funny and freewheeling mood. She jests about the suggestive pictures of female models plastered on the walls around us (“Boner patrol, look out!”) and swerves easily from topics highbrow (abstract Russian painter Kazimir Malevich) to low (an off-and-on gamer, she was briefly obsessed with The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild). Clark chose to soundtrack her shoot with David Bowie’s coke-fueled 1976 classic, Station to Station, and as we gush over it, the singer-songwriter gives her beige Prada jacket a little shake. “I do like to think this trench coat is giving ‘Dancing in the Street,’ ” she says, referencing the outrageously ’80s music video for Bowie and Mick Jagger’s hit cover. “Minus the cocaine.”
Much like Clark herself, St. Vincent’s Grammy Award-winning output — which has run the gamut from twee indie to ass-kicking art-rock to conceptual electropop — is an arresting mix of the intellect and the id. Her latest album, All Born Screaming, can be experienced as an atavistic staring contest with existence — or simply as a rippin’ alt-rock record.
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“It’s about life and death and love,” she explains. “And that’s it.” For the 41-year-old Clark, at least two of those topics are intrinsically linked to her own identity as a queer artist. “Every record I’ve ever made has been so personal about what’s going on in my life at any given time. I’m queer. I know how to code-switch. The idea of identity as performance has been very clear to me since I was a child.” Even so, Clark shuts down the suggestion that she adopted a mask or performative identity for the album: “I’m queer, I’m living in multitudes, but this record in particular is not about persona or deconstruction.”
Shushu/Tong dress and headpiece, Zhilyova gloves, BY FAR shoes.
Lenne Chai
Code-switching — changing one’s behavior to suit an uncomfortable environment — is nothing new for LGBTQ+ people. Even in the generally progressive-minded music community, Clark says the world queer musicians currently inhabit is “very different” than when she kicked off her recording career in 2006 with the three-song EP Paris Is Burning. “Which is one of those things which gives me a lot of hope,” she notes. “I know there are certain things in the world trending in a scary direction, but all in all, I’d rather live right now than any other time in history. We wouldn’t be having this conversation 60 years ago. I would be a nurse, I would be a secretary, or I would be a mother.”
When I suggest that 60 years ago, I would have been pushed into a heterosexual union and having same-sex dalliances on the down-low, she laughs and perks up. “Exactly! You would have a beautiful wife at home and would be getting your d–k sucked at the whatever. And you’d never know if it was a cop [trying to entrap you].”
As she references the hankie code (as early as the ’70s, gay men used different-colored bandannas to signify sexual preferences) and Hal Fischer’s 1977 photo book, Gay Semiotics: A Photographic Study of Visual Coding Among Homosexual Men, it’s clear Clark knows her queer history. “People the world was hostile to developed these secret languages, secret codes, in order to communicate. I find that fascinating,” she says. “You’re very aware there’s a subterranean, subtext layer to everything that’s going on — and you have your antennae up at all times. That is erotic to me. But I’m glad that [I live in this era].”
As for the downside to LGBTQ+ culture going mainstream? “Well, if you’re safe for the TV screen, you also invite an aspect of grift [from the outside world],” she muses. “Which… I raise an eyebrow at.” To emphasize her point, she cocks her left brow; for a moment, she could pass for a hyperlogical Vulcan on Star Trek. “But there have been plenty of queer people in music. Even if the culture was saying no, there were always queer people in the arts. Please. We have built this.”
For a college dropout, Clark has done pretty well for herself. Born in Tulsa, Okla., she relocated to Texas as a child when her mother moved her and two older sisters to Dallas following her parents’ divorce. (Clark now has four brothers and four sisters from the combined families.) Her childhood obsession with the guitar, ignited by the 1987 Ritchie Valens biopic La Bamba starring Lou Diamond Phillips, became serious as she entered her teen years, and a stint as a roadie for her uncle’s jazz-folk duo, Tuck & Patti, gave Clark her first taste of the touring business.
Clark attended Boston’s prestigious Berklee College of Music but left after three years (though her parents didn’t find out until several years later, when they read it in the press). “Other people have real educations,” she says. “I had philosophy teachers who were like, ‘How is Kierkegaard like Bob Marley?’ ” She shakes her head, almost tenderly. “It’s not. It’s not and that’s fine.” (When I ask how a music school dropout seems to have an endless fount of cultural, historical and artistic references at her disposal, she laughs and asks, “Is that your way of saying, ‘It’s OK you never went to real college’?”)
After cutting herself loose from Berklee, Clark spent 2005 and 2006 on the road with the robe-rocking, symphonic indie outfit Polyphonic Spree, joining Sufjan Stevens’ touring band for a spell shortly thereafter. Her solo debut album, Marry Me, released in 2007 on Beggars Banquet, was a chamber-pop cauldron with notes of Stevens and Spree, but had a playful, wry sense of humor that indicated it was just the tip of the St. Vincent iceberg. (For one thing, the album takes its title from a running joke on Arrested Development — a fact that today causes Clark to rest her head on her fingertips in faux embarrassment before concluding, “It is a great show.”)
On her next release, Actor, Clark’s music developed a jagged, sardonic bite that brought her to the Billboard 200 for the first time (at No. 90). Her top 20 follow-up, the 2011 art-rock statement Strange Mercy, was tinged with pain, fury, self-doubt and confusion — and dispelled any lingering misconceptions that she was a holdover from the demure, precious indie pop of the ’00s. While Clark had always seemed like an artist with something to say, on Strange Mercy, she sounded like an artist who needed to say something.
“In order to get good, you have to go through a series of humbling and humiliating experiences,” she reflects. “On the other hand, you have to have this psychotic belief — an unreasonable belief, truly — that you are going to write songs and make music that is going to matter. And that’s a really crazy thought.” She pauses. “I have that thought — with plenty of self-loathing and self-laceration — but I also have this [feeling], ‘If I don’t do this, I’m going to die.’ ”
Camilla and Marc shirt, Nour Hammour coat, Zhilyova gloves.
Lenne Chai
Among those who took notice of Clark’s creativity and drive was Talking Heads legend and fellow rock eccentric David Byrne. Their 2012 collaborative album, the funky, brass-heavy Love This Giant, netted Byrne his first top 40 entry outside Talking Heads on the Billboard 200.
“Annie is so many things all at once,” Byrne tells Billboard. “Beautiful, inventive, inscrutable — in the best way possible. I know her as someone warm and friendly, but as anyone listening to her music can hear, she’s got a dark side that as far as I know just has an outlet in her music. Would that all of us could do that.”
After a lengthy tour with Byrne — “I love playing shows. I’m up there, and truly, something else kicks in,” Clark emphasizes — she solidified her reputation as an art-rock auteur on her self-titled fourth album, the first of three on Loma Vista, in 2014. With a chromatic purple-blue-pink palette and a gray ’do teased to the heavens, Clark delivered the most stylistically cohesive St. Vincent album yet — and for the first time on wax, she sounded like she was having a blast. St. Vincent won Clark a Grammy for best alternative music album, kicking off an active streak of her collecting at least one Grammy per proper studio release since. In 2014, Clark also spoke publicly about her queerness for the first time, telling Rolling Stone, “I believe in gender fluidity and sexual fluidity.”
With 2017’s Masseduction, Clark pivoted to electropop and paired it with neon-drenched, latex-heavy visuals, as well as some of her most personal songs yet. Co-produced by Jack Antonoff, the album (her first top 10 entry on the Billboard 200) expanded her creative circle to include a range of musicians such as Sounwave, Kamasi Washington, Jenny Lewis, Mike Elizondo, Pino Palladino and Cara Delevingne (the latter of whom Clark dated for a year and a half, briefly putting her in the tabloid spotlight). Masseduction singles “New York” and “Los Ageless” hit the Adult Alternative Airplay and Hot Rock & Alternative Songs charts, and the title track won her the Grammy for best rock song. Not that she’s in it for the accolades: “I’m a musician because I’m obsessed with making music,” Clark states. “If I wasn’t, God knows, I don’t think it would be pretty.”
As her profile grew, Clark earned her first GLAAD Media Award nomination for outstanding music artist in 2018; that June, she unleashed “Fast Slow Disco,” a dancefloor remix of one of Masseduction’s tracks, along with a music video where she cavorted with a throng of leather-clad men making out with one another. “Happy Pride,” she tweeted. “It was sweet of these boys to let me crash their party.”
Fittingly, the tune’s title was inspired by a text message exchange with Wendy Melvoin, whose romantic relationship with Lisa Coleman in Prince’s backing band The Revolution provided sorely needed representation in the ’80s. “Annie’s a real artist. It’s always satisfying to be friends and compatriots with people that you have respect for,” Melvoin says. “She’s extremely talented,” Coleman agrees. “[She’s] a real musician that was so influenced by what we did, and she had a reverence for us. It was easy to return that because she is so good.”
St. Vincent wearing Ultra Open Earbuds by @Bose and Maggi Simpkins.
Lenne Chai
By 2021’s Daddy’s Home, Clark had nothing left to prove, which might explain why the album — partially inspired by her father’s 2019 release from prison after he served time for a stock manipulation scheme — was her first where she looked backward for inspiration. (Then again, maybe she meant it literally when she titled her 2017-18 tour Fear the Future.) Steeped in ’70s rock, AM pop and queer camp, the album netted her another Grammy for best alternative music album and another GLAAD nomination for outstanding music artist. As a victory lap and era-appropriate tie-in, she supplemented her own headlining trek for the record with a stint opening for Roxy Music’s farewell tour.
Beyond Roxy Music and Byrne, Clark has amassed an enviable Rolodex of rock royalty. She performed alongside the surviving members of Nirvana at their 2014 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony; produced Sleater-Kinney’s 2019 album, The Center Won’t Hold, and co-starred with the band’s Carrie Brownstein in the trippy 2020 mockumentary The Nowhere Inn; contributed to the 2021 remix album McCartney III Imagined (even getting a phone call from the Beatle himself); and feted Eurythmics at the duo’s 2022 Songwriters Hall of Fame induction, performing “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This).” Having worked with so many of her own musical heroes, she has also paid that forward, contributing to tracks by next-gen fans like Willow and Olivia Rodrigo.
“I’ve been a huge St. Vincent fan since I was a teenager. I think she’s such an inspiring artist and a wonderful person. I was so excited to bring her in to work on this song,” Rodrigo tells Billboard of co-writing “Obsessed” with Clark for the deluxe version of GUTS. “She added so many unique textures and sounds that I could’ve never thought of.”
Those inventive, meticulous methods stuck out to Willow when Clark guested on “Pain for Fun” from the former’s 2024 album, empathogen. “St. Vincent’s prodigious attention to detail is something that I have admired since hearing her for the first time at 12 years old,” Willow says. “To have had the opportunity to be in the same room with her, to witness and observe her process, is something that I will always hold close to my heart and something I will always refer back to for inspiration.”
“She’s an inspiration to me, but I can see [she is] to a lot of other singers and songwriters as well,” Byrne says. “And a somewhat underrated guitar goddess.” (Clark even has her own signature axe, a collaboration with Ernie Ball Music Man, which Jack White played on Saturday Night Live in 2018 and Rodrigo trotted out on her tour this year.)
Another one of those singer-songwriters is, of course, Taylor Swift. Alongside Antonoff and Swift, Clark wrote (and played guitar on) “Cruel Summer” from 2019’s Lover. After years of fan campaigns and three subsequent studio albums, Swift finally released “Cruel Summer” as a single in 2023; it topped the Billboard Hot 100 for four weeks and has spent more time on the chart than any of her other hits, earning an astounding 1 billion official on-demand U.S. streams, according to Luminate.
“I remain blown away by ‘Cruel Summer’ being the phenomenon that is it,” Clark says. “Not because it isn’t a great song. It’s indicative of the time we’re in, where a song from many albums ago, that wasn’t even a single at the time, the fans go, ‘No, this one — we pick this one.’ And then they march it up the charts. That’s completely a testament to her fan base being so powerful.”
While some critics and fans have described the rock-heavy, emotionally raw All Born Screaming as a return to form, the album also marks a few notable firsts for Clark. Though distributed by Virgin Music Group, it’s the inaugural release on her own label, Total Pleasure Records, which she calls “just a little cozy place for me.” She’s excited about plenty of young artists but shrugs off any label boss ambitions. “I never want to be the person who is like, ‘I’m so sorry, we can’t afford to pay for your video unless you shill for cat laxatives,’ ” she deadpans. “I’m not trying to be The Man to any talent that I love. It just means autonomy.”
Clark insists that “DIY till you die” is her guiding mantra on all fronts, from making music to mounting tours on a scalable level. “I more enjoy the creative side, but you have to be across all of it. It’s your career. You can’t just let someone tell you where you are going. And putting all those pieces together is fun for me.”
St. Vincent wearing Ultra Open Earbuds by @Bose and Maggi Simpkins.
Lenne Chai
Perhaps more significantly, All Born Screaming is also the first of her own albums on which she is credited as sole producer (though she has co-produced more than half of her discography).
“I don’t think I could have made this record any other way. I don’t think I would have written these songs or explored this stuff without the solitude,” she says. “Around 2019 [I thought], ‘OK, I eventually just want to produce my own work.’ When I was making Daddy’s Home, I started making a plan for my engineer, Cian Riordan, to make my studio proper — to get more into the engineering side, hone my chops and build a playground for myself. But if I’m honest, the seed was planted earlier, because by the time I was 14 or 15 I was recording myself in my bedroom.” (Clark’s studio is in Los Angeles; she splits her time among New York, L.A. and Texas.)
A 2023 study of popular songs by the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative found that just 3.4% of hits were produced by women in 2022, and Clark is still one of very few female producers finding success in the music business — with plenty more, she notes, deserving attention. “There are lots of women making their music DIY-style, and that is production,” she says. “My friend Cate Le Bon [who guests on All Born Screaming’s title track] is a great example of someone who produces herself and other people.” (The album also features drumming from Dave Grohl, Josh Freese and Warpaint’s Stella Mozgawa.)
When it comes to ways to increase LGBTQ+ inclusion in the industry, Clark is reluctant to provide any glib or easy answers. “The answer is, ‘Of course,’ but I can’t go, ‘If we only changed this policy.’ ” The Texas-raised Clark does not, however, hold back when asked about Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, who she says is waging “an absolute war on women and reproductive rights. That dude sucks. He sucks. I hate that dude.” For a brief moment, she sounds like an exasperated teenager ranting about her high school principal, but soon regains her poise. “What I love about Texas is the toughness and the grit. You can’t be too highfalutin. With love, they’ll knock you down a peg.” She looks thoughtful. “I did run away when I was 18, but at the same time, if you asked me to name parts of my identity, ‘Texan’ would be up there.”
St. Vincent wearing Ultra Open Earbuds by @Bose and Maggi Simpkins. CAMILLA AND MARC shirt, Nour Hammour coat, Zhilyova gloves, JW PEI shoes.
Lenne Chai
As an artist who has explored both identity and technology deeply, Clark is cautiously intrigued by the musical potential of artificial intelligence in the hands of artists. “The tool is as interesting as its holder,” she says, then flashes a mischievous half-smile. “In some ways, I’m more concerned about artists sounding like AI than I am [about] AI sounding like artists.”
Clark is far more troubled by a more established technology in the digital music era. “If you are a big pop artist, streaming is fine. But there is some music that reaches you very deeply but isn’t music that you put on every single day. I’m not going to listen to John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme every day. It’s one of the most pivotal records of my life, but I’m not going to stream it over and over,” she says. “Streaming incentivizes songs to be consumable over and over again. Now, certainly there’s great music you want to consume like that — but there’s a lot of music that’s excellent and doesn’t fall into that category. And those artists, because of streaming, are wilting on the vine.” (St. Vincent’s catalog has accumulated a respectable 394.6 million official on-demand U.S. streams.)
Aside from friends like Le Bon, there are plenty of modern artists who keep Clark jazzed about music’s future. “I love Rosalía,” she says, leaning forward in her chair. “I saw her show last year. It was just art. It was so thoughtfully done. Post-modern choreography, flamenco. Just excellent.” All Born Screaming includes “Sweetest Fruit,” a tribute to the late trans artist SOPHIE, whom Clark deeply admired (though fan reaction to its literal lyrics was mixed). British rapper Little Simz is another favorite, and she lights up when talking about Willow. “She’s unbelievable. Her knowledge base and depth of reference is deep and varied. She’s pulling all these things together and making them her own, which is exactly what an artist should do.”
Whether speaking about her fellow artists, the music industry or her queer identity, Clark is animated and engaged; the only time she seems at a loss is when talking about how she fills her time that isn’t spent making music.
“I listen to a lot of audiobooks. Which is so boring,” she murmurs. “I work out. So boring.” Does she cook for herself? “Girl, no. Even playing Zelda, I would make dubious food.” Watch TV? “I will maybe watch something to fall asleep. I rewatched 30 Rock recently. I am obsessed with Girls5eva. It’s all the sensibility of 30 Rock, but with deep musical references. It makes me so happy.” Foster any unusual hobbies? “I walked into this bar across from Electric Lady [Studios in New York], but it was the wrong place — it was a coffee shop that turns into a knitting hour. I got the f–k out of there.”
After nearly two decades of making music professionally, Clark doesn’t seem fatigued or disenchanted by a business that often frustrates uncompromising creatives. If anything, she’s finding it easier to “trust in the process” with seven albums under her beloved trench’s belt. “There’s going to be speed bumps, and there’s going to be days when you don’t want to get out of bed. ‘Ugh, I can’t even face myself.’ And other days where you’re like, ‘Yeah, I am crushing it, wow!’ ”
Calling those polar mood swings “cancers to excise,” Clark says “it’s a miracle” she gets anything done. “The whole thing is chasing this feeling of being lit up and confused but excited at the same time,” she says. “It’s a bunch of people blowing into the same thing to make a balloon and, eventually, it rises. I don’t know how anything happens. I really don’t. The whole thing is mysterious. But I know if I focus on this little thing that I love, it will be OK.”
This story will appear in the June 22, 2024, issue of Billboard.
“Did you come in when I was dressed like a sperm?” Despite her wry tone, Annie Clark — the artist better known as St. Vincent — isn’t joking. Not quite an hour earlier, Clark was posing for her Billboard photo shoot in a hooded, ruffled cream mini-dress in front of a billowing blush-pink backdrop meant to […]
Stevie Nicks had to cancel her concert Saturday night (June 15) at Hersheypark Stadium in Hershey, Pennsylvania, because of “illness in the band,” according to a brief statement shared on the singer’s official social media accounts.
“Regrettably, due to illness in the band, tonight’s performance is being postponed. Please hold on to your tickets. A new date will be announced soon,” said the update, originally posted by the stadium at 5:30 p.m. ET on Saturday. The update was later added to Nicks’ stories on Instagram and Facebook, and shared on her page on X (formerly Twitter).
Billboard reached out to Nicks’ representatives for comment on Sunday. At press time, no further details or updates have been provided.
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The rock icon and vocalist for Fleetwood Mac, 76, was expected to take the stage Saturday night at the latest stop on her ongoing Live in Concert Tour across the U.S.
Nicks’ performance was postponed just hours before showtime.
In posts on social media, fans reported the show was canceled around the time doors were set to open, when they were already in line to enter the concert grounds. A video posted by a concertgoer in the comments of the announcement indicated soundcheck happened Saturday afternoon.
As of Sunday (June 16), Nicks’ published schedule has her performing on June 18 in Grand Rapids and June 21 in Chicago. What follows is a short break in her itinerary until July 3, when she’s set to jet to Europe for a gig in Dublin, Ireland. U.K. dates come next (Glasgow, Manchester and London), then stops in Antwerp, Belgium, and Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
Last weekend Billboard saw Nicks and her touring band put on a lively show at Mohegan Sun Arena in Uncasville, Connecticut, with a 15-song setlist spanning solo hits and classics from Fleetwood Mac’s discography, complemented with plenty of career anecdotes told between songs. “My stories are starting to become as long as the show,” the star joked during her June 9 performance.
After opening with Bella Donna‘s “Outside the Rain” and playing the Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 “Dreams,” from Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours, Nicks was in good spirits, telling the cheering crowd, “We’re very glad to be here. We got to fly in on a helicopter. It was truly magnificent.”
Bush are gearing up to hit the road in support of their Loaded: The Greatest Hits 1994-2023 collection celebrating the band’s three-decade career. But five weeks out from that tour’s kick-off, singer and founder Gavin Rossdale tells Billboard that he’s already looking ahead before he looks back. “I am gonna leave here today and go […]
Every year, the Songwriters Hall of Fame induction ceremony usually provides at least one wow moment by having a superstar deliver a breathtaking version of a song written by one of the honorees, or delivering a pairing that creates a watercooler moment, but this year, the 53rd annual edition — held Thursday (June 13) at the Marriott Marquis in New York — topped itself by reuniting inductees R.E.M. on stage for the quartet’s first public performance in more than 15 years.
In addition to the seminal alternative rock band, this year’s class included Timbaland, who innovatively blended R&B, hip-hop and pop elements; Dean Pitchford, whose songs for movies have proved as indelible, if not more so, than the films themselves; Steely Dan, who created a whole new cool paradigm with their combination of ennui, jazz and rock; and Hillary Lindsey, whose more than 27 No. 1 country songs have taken artists such as Little Big Town and Carrie Underwood to new creative heights.
A songwriter whose catalog has made a significant commercial and artistic impact is eligible for induction 20 years after their first song was commercially released. The exception for the 20 years is made for the recipient of the Hal David Starlight Award, which is presented to a rising songwriter who has already delivered a distinguished body of work. This year’s honoree was multiple Grammy winner SZA.
The SHOF’s highest honor is the Johnny Mercer Award, which is given to a past honoree whose body of work upholds the esteemed standards set by legendary songwriter Mercer. This year’s recipient, Diane Warren, was originally inducted into SHOF in 2001. In a separate ceremony in Nashville, trailblazing country writer Cindy Walker was posthumously inducted into SHOF.
The event opened on a sad note with SHOF show committee chairman Evan Lamberg (who is also North American president of Universal Music Publishing Group), announcing that SHOF’s president/CEO and the organization’s heartbeat, Linda Moran, was missing her first ceremony in 23 years because she is fighting leukemia. “She is under great care and is pointed in the right direction,” Lamberg said assuringly before filming a video of the audience sending love and cheers Moran’s way.
From R.E.M.’s unexpected reunion to Warren’s delightfully profane acceptance speech and SZA’s heartfelt comments on being a songwriter, here are some of the best moments from the 2024 Songwriters Hall of Fame.
R.E.M. Leads the Crowd to Lose Their Religion (and Minds)
Image Credit: Bennett Raglin/Getty Images for Songwriters Hall Of Fame
Beloved Swedish punk rockers Refused had to cancel their gig at Stockholm’s Rosendal Garden Party festival this weekend after singer Dennis Lyxzén revealed that he’d suffered a heart attack. The show, which was hyped as the band’s final festival gig in Sweden, was scotched after Lyxzén was hospitalized and told to rest by doctors.
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“So this morning I had a massive heart attack at my hotel room. It’s was extremely painful and wildly scary,” the singer said on Thursday (June 13) alongside a photo of him in the hospital hooked up to a raft of medical devices. “Thanks the the wonderful doctors and nurses at the Uppsala hospital I’m still around to fight another day. Under the circumstances I feel ok. Sore and tired and really shook up.”
In addition to their festival swan song, the gig would also have been the Refused’s first show in four years after the COVID-19 pandemic forced them to cancel their 2020 North American tour after a March 9 gig in Los Angeles.
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“I real really hate cancelling show but the doctor said no rock for a couple of weeks,” Lyxzén continued. “Which means that the @refused show at @rosendalgardenparty is not happening.A complete bummer as I was really looking forward to it. But hopefully I/we will be able to make up to you soon.” He said the good news was that with medication his doctors believe he can be up and rocking again “hopefully sooner than later.”
The band released a trio of blistering post-hardcore albums in the 1990s, including their smash mouth 1994 debut, This Just Might Be… The Truth, followed by 1996’s equally blistering Songs to Fan the Flames of Discontent and the LP that is considered to be their creative peak, 1998’s The Shape of Punk to Come, which added some jazzy and experimental elements to the songs again driven by Lyxzén’s primal howl vocals.
After breaking up following the tour for Shape — with Lyxzén going on to form The (International) Noise Conspiracy — they reunited in 2012 for a tour and two more albums, 2015’s Freedom and 2019’s War Music.
Lyxzén ended his message with a note of hope and gratitude, signing off, “Life is weird and precious. Take care of each and tell your loved ones that you love them.”
The post got lots of love from Lyxzén’s punk brethren, including Thursday singer Geoff Rickly, who wrote, “Take it easy. Rest up. We need people like you man” and Epitaph Records founder/Bad Religion guitarist Brett Gurewitz, who said, “Sending you love and heartfelt wishes for a speedy recovery my friend”; Epitaph released Freedom. The singer also got love from the bands Snapcase, Sick of It All, Rancid’s Lars Frederiksen, Thursday and DJ Steve Aoki, among others.
See Lyxzén’s post below.
Coldplay are gearing up to launch their Moon Music era. On Thursday (June 13) the band announced that the first single from their upcoming follow-up to 2021’s Music of the Spheres, “feelslikeimfallinginlove,” will drop on June 21. The tease featured the song’s unwieldy title across the face of a waning planet with a colorful corona […]
Las Vegas’ Sphere has its next occupant lined up. The mind-bending venue announced on Thursday (June 13) that Rock and Roll Hall of Famers the Eagles will swoop into town in the fall for eight residency shows over four weekends. The gigs will kick off on Sept. 20 and run through Oct. 19, with a […]
In a 2022 interview with Publishers Weekly, Colin Meloy talked about discovering author Stephen King in the sixth grade — writing that inspired his own work as a novelist of such young adult books as the Wildwood and The Stars Did Wander Darkling. Not counting the 33 1/3 series book he wrote on The Replacements‘ Let It Be album in 2004, Meloy’s literary career began in earnest in 2011, by which time he’d already established himself as the Stephen King of indie rock.
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As the frontman and principal songwriter of The Decemberists, Meloy is a prolific crafter of songs that are as lyrically rich as their music — contemporary issues expressed through ancient history and freighted with dark storylines and black humor. He doesn’t write about vampires and killer dogs or cars — wicked mortals and the luckless are his forté — but like King’s stories, Meloy’s songs connect and captivate with authentic humanity, even when something sinister is afoot. He makes bad behavior sound really good.
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That certainly holds true for The Decemberists’ new double album, As It Ever Was, So It Will Be Again — the band’s first release in six years, as well as the first on their own label, YABB — which drops June 14. Meloy says it’s their best album, and he may be right. Certainly, it’s their best double album — a fat-free collection of songs that, like Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk, takes creative and sonic chances and yet flows as cohesive, immensely enjoyable and often profound song cycle.
The Decemberists ‘As It Ever Was, So It Will Be Again’
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The Portland, Ore. Band’s last album, 2018’s I’ll Be Your Girl was largely a provocative reaction to the 2016 presidential election, epitomized by the brilliant, searing single, ‘Severed.” But, as Meloy explains now, singing those angry songs during the tour that followed left him exhausted.
As It Ever Was, So It Will Be Again is an irreverent musical revival of sorts — an attempt to muck out the political and cultural sludge we’ve slogged through for close to 10 years now — perhaps so that we are prepared for a second dose. The jaunty gallows humor of the album’s opener, “Burial Ground” sets the tone with Meloy singing, “This world’s all wrong, so let’s go where we belong. Pack up the stereo, meet at the burial ground.”
As it does on so many Decemberists’ albums, death looms, but on “The Reapers” and “The Black Maria” it’s inevitable, not personal. We are all doomed, Meloy seems to be saying, so why not really live while we can. “Long White Veil” puts the listener to that test. It’s a song about a woman who dies on her wedding night, with a pedal steel and guitar sound that dares you not to dance.
The album closes with a stone-cold masterpiece, “Joan in the Garden,” which was sparked by Meloy’s reading of The Book of Joan, Lidia Yuknavitch’s science-fiction riff on the story of Joan of Arc and his subsequent immersion in the history and lore of the martyr and early feminist. A prog-rock track with massive fuzzy guitars, bombastic drums, chimes and careening synths, “Joan in the Garden” clocks in at more than 19 minutes and includes an instrumental interlude that sounds like supernal electricity punctuated by muffled voices and the THX audio company’s sonic logo. (Could that also be a nod to OMD’s “Joan of Arc” at the song’s beginning?)
It’s a cathartic, carburetor-clearing banger that brings the album full circle. The last lines of the song’s last verse serve as the album’s title, and a mantra that, in light of these times, could be inspirational or delusional: “As it ever was, so it will be again.”
The title of the album reminds me of that Karl Marx quote, “History repeats itself. First is tragedy, second is farce.”These days we seem to be living through a combination of the two. Any thoughts on that?
Is that Karl Marx or Groucho Marx? I’m familiar with that quote. I didn’t know that was Karl Marx. That was not on my mind. “As it ever was, so it will be again” is the last line of “Joan in the Garden,” which is a triumphal moment, but I also think it’s about returning and about permanence or how we perceive permanence. I think there’s a lot of things to unpack at that.
I interpreted the cover art as a return in the way that nature returned during the pandemic.
There is something about that. I think there is a return to nature, to simplicity — to a kind of idyllic world that exists in our imagination. And it’s a little skewed. To go back isn’t always the best way forward.
“Joan in the Garden” is an epic song. Have you ever seen Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc?
I have.
That song would make a great soundtrack to the movie.
“Joan in the Garden” came out of a weird period in my life. Starting in 2017, I became super fascinated with the story of Joan of Arc after reading Lidia Yuknavitch’s The Book of Joan, which recasts her story in this weird, bizarre, future world. After I read that I was like, “What is the real story of Joan of Arc?” So, I went back and read another novel. I read a biography, and I certainly watched that film. It’s absolutely beautiful — all those close-ups of her [actress Renée Jeanne Falconetti].
A movie director once told me that the burning-at-the-stake scenes got a little too realistic.
I read that, too. I think some of that was real emotion. Real tears that were brought out in her. Real fear.
Is there anything you’ve read or watched recently that resonated with you?
Prophet Song by Paul Lynch. It won the Booker Prize. That book is phenomenal. I also read The Bee Sting by another Irish writer named Paul Murray that I really loved. Stuff I’m watching — I really love Ripley, the Netflix adaptation of The Talented Mr. Ripley with Andrew Scott. And then we just watched the season finale of Shogun. I thought they did such a good job with that series.
The songs on As It Ever Was are not the first laced with dark happenings and black humor. But I feel like the album alludes to death and mortality more than on past records. Do you agree?
Maybe. I’d have to look. I think with every Decemberists record, somebody makes a crack about how many people die in a Decemberists record. I don’t know that the death count in this one is that high. I leave that up to our capable fans. I think there’s a lot of meditations about death and dying and mortality — maybe more than there are actual deaths.
Where do these meditations come from?
Oh gosh, I guess it’s not often far from my mind. It’s a universal thing. It’s something that we all share — birth and death. I feel like I’m drawn back to it time and time again.
I’m guessing you had finished the album by the time the wars in Ukraine and on the Gaza strip and Donald Trump’s numerous trials began. Did the political climate in America factor into your songwriting at all?
Our last record was shot through with resentment and reaction to the 2016 election and living under a Trump presidency, and I came out the other end of touring behind that record so exhausted from all the vitriol that I was spewing [in those songs]. So, while we’re clearly not out from underneath Trumpism, I need to move on from that and being angry about that. But it does show up. The song “America Made Me” is a reflection on my experience with Americanism in 2024, and the brand we have on us as Americans. But beyond that, I don’t know. I mean certainly you could read “Joan in the Garden” as an anti-authoritarian song. But beyond that I’m not sure that I spent much time dwelling on politics.
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I’ve read that the song “William Fitzwilliam’ has a connection to John Prine?
It’s sort of me writing a John Prine song. Right when the lockdown happened, I was reading Hilary Mantel’s book The Mirror and the Light, which is the third in her Wolf Hall series about the Court of Henry VIII. At the same time, I was reading about all the stuff that was happening in lockdown and John Prine died. I went back and listened to these John Prine records and even learned a John Prine song for this streaming tribute thing. I had Hilary Mantel and John Prine on the brain, and they just collided into this song “William Fitzwilliam.”
The press release for the album says you consider As It Ever Was, So It Will Be Again The Decemberists’ best album. Can you give me a sense of why you feel that way?
In so many ways, it’s a culmination of everything that we’ve tried to do from the beginning of our career. I think it hits every note. Probably some of that is my own bias of it being fresh new music. I did have a moment in the studios where listening through, I thought, “This the best thing that we’ve done.” I think the structure is there from song one to song 13. Other people can argue with that. I’m probably the worst expert to give you that kind of summation, so why not just shoot my mouth off about it.
I find it interesting there have been such a proliferation of double albums recently: Taylor Swift, Travis Scott, Morgan Wallen and now The Decemberists. Is it that people were so cooped up during the pandemic that they have a lot they need to express?
That’s part of it. Also, we’ve never really done a proper 70-minute double record, and I feel like this is our time to do it. I had regrets that What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World wasn’t a double record. Weirdly, we kind of split the difference with that record. It should have been a very short record or a very long record. In my head, it exists as a double record.
There’s always the anniversary edition.
As far as double records out in the world today, I do think there’s lots of people putting lots of music out. It’s easier to record and there’s less constraints, but I grew up loving certain double records and the big swings they make. I think of Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk and Zen Arcade by Husker Du. Some of the classic double records.
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You talk about the exhaustion that resulted from the Your Girl/Your Ghost World Tour. Did you ever consider walking away from the music business?
I feel that way between every record. At every stage in my career, I’ve had this longing to just chuck it all in. I think that’s my own weird hangup. I’m a private person. I’m a reserved person. I tussle so much with how I’m perceived and receiving criticism and constantly putting myself out there in this way and being drawn to that over time it’s just so challenging. I continue like a moth to a flame. I come back. I can only hope that each time that flame burns a little brighter and it gets a little hotter. At least maybe I’m making better work for all that anguish.
This is your first album on your own label. Why start one now?
We were done with Capitol, and the major label world has changed so much. We were always outliers as a major label band. The people call us a quintessential indie rock band and I would be like, “But we’re not, actually.” I feel like we managed to make it work at Capitol, and for whatever reason they kept us around even though they were more and more geared towards making pop records. By no means is there bad blood or anything. Working with Capitol was surprisingly great. But at this point in our career, we don’t need a major label behind us anymore. We have our fan base, and there are more and more channels available to independent artists making their own work. It has changed so much since we signed to Capitol in, whatever, 2005, that it didn’t make sense to go back to a major label. It felt like if ever there was a time to take this under our own control, it was now.
Do you own your masters prior to this album?
No. Those are all Capitol’s or Kill Rock Stars’. In time we will own masters, but the deal with the devil that you make is that you give up your masters.
I find it interesting that you write young adult fiction and songs that, from my perspective, are created for people with much more life experience, and a healthy sense of mortality. How do these two creative engines coexist?
I don’t think they’re too far off from one another. The stuff that I write or at least the stuff that I am drawn to as far as books for kids is darker, and I think so much of children’s literature up until kind of recently was always a little dark. Folk tales and fairytales are as much about warning kids about the darkness and evil in the world and death as they are about imparting any kind of moral lesson. And so, I feel like that’s the mode that I worked in in the books, and then similarly I feel like that’s also part of what I write in the songs, too.
Your novel Wildwood is going to be a film and you’re writing the soundtrack?
I’m contributing songs to it. There’s a composer writing the soundtrack, the cinematic music for it. But I have been asked to contribute a couple of songs and then maybe one for the end credits. Who knows. With these things, you never know what’s going to survive.
Will you perform the songs solo or with The Decemberists?
We might be doing a song for the end credits. But the songs that I wrote will be sung by the actors; the characters in the movie. There’s just a couple of them.
You are also working on a musical theater project. Are you able to talk about it?
I can’t really talk about it in detail. Right now, it’s still in a gestational phase. But I feel like it’s something that I’ve been devoting a whole lot of songwriting time to over the last three years and, in some ways, I think really helped and informed the songs that I was writing for the band.